Affirmative Reaction: Kennedy, Nixon, King, and the Evolution of Color-Blind Rhetoric

@article{Holmes2007AffirmativeRK,
  title={Affirmative Reaction: Kennedy, Nixon, King, and the Evolution of Color-Blind Rhetoric},
  author={David G. Holmes},
  journal={Rhetoric Review},
  year={2007},
  volume={26},
  pages={25 - 41}
}
Abstract This essay blends critical race theory and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's sociological theory of color-blind racism to interrogate color-blind rhetoric. It uses the Kennedy–Nixon Presidential Debates as a site that, while illustrating the widely presumed duplicitous nature of political discourse, paradoxically romanticizes and concretizes the concepts of freedom and equality as race-neutral categories. Tracing the term “color blindness” to the Plessy Versus Ferguson case, the paper exposes… 
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